KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSdAy, dEcEmBER 9, 2021
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEWS
Finding
the right
answers
G
ov. Kate Brown has called the
Legislature into special session
on Monday, Dec. 13, to try to
give renters additional protection against
evictions.
We don’t know if the solutions she
proposes are the right ones, but there is
little question quick action is needed.
There has been money available to
help renters, but the state has had trouble
moving fast enough to get it to landlords.
The state has also calculated that all the
money it has to distribute will be gone,
leaving some people to face eviction just
as the weather turns colder.
“Oregon Housing and Community
Services received $289 million in federal
rental assistance funds to help Oregon
renters impacted by COVID-19,” the
governor’s office said in a statement. “As
of last week, OHCS and their local part-
ners had paid out close to $150 million
in federal emergency rental assistance to
over 22,000 households.”
Gov. Brown proposes to
• Give safe harbor protections for
people who have applied for rental assis-
tance
• Ensure landlords are paid for what
they are owed, provide
• Provide up to $90 million in rental
assistance
• And provide $100 million to “long-
term, locally-delivered eviction preven-
tion services.”
What’s not clear is how many Orego-
nians face eviction without state assis-
tance and how much of that is due to
the shudder given to the economy by
COVID-19.
Oregon’s digital
vaccine card is not
really a passport
A
passport is something that can be
required for entry. Oregon’s new
digital vaccine card won’t be a
passport. It’s going to be an optional way
people can show their vaccination status.
People already have options. They can
carry around their vaccination card — or
what’s probably smarter — carry around
a photocopy or a photo of it on their
phone. We haven’t had anyone demand to
see ours, but it could happen.
The digital vaccine card, which the
Oregon Health Authority is developing,
would be one more optional way of carry-
ing around that information.
Oregon’s card would be similar to the
one in California and Washington state,
according to a report from the Oregon
capital chronicle. you would upload
your name, date of birth, cellphone or
email and a four-digit number. your
vaccination status would be checked.
Once confirmed, you would get a link to
the digital vaccination card to show on
your phone. It’s already being tested in
Oregon.
you call it a vaccine passport if you
want. It’s similar to one. A vaccine pass-
port is good shorthand. But the idea in
Oregon is that it will be an optional way
of carrying around vaccination status.
Pearl Harbor is emphatically not forgotten
BRIGIT
FARLEY
PAST AND PROLOGUE
T
uesday, Dec. 7, 2021, marked 80
years since the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. It is hard to imag-
ine a more fateful event in 20th century
history.
As the last veterans of World War II
pass on, there is no time like the pres-
ent to revisit the day that “will live in
infamy” and assess some of its impact.
The most immediate result of the
Pearl Harbor attack proved to be the
U.S. entry into World War II. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on
Japan the next day, December 8, 1941.
Meanwhile, Nazi Germany had nearly
conquered all of Europe, leaving Great
Britain holding out alone.
Despite the obvious danger a
Nazi-dominated Europe posed to the
U.S., Roosevelt had no pretext for inter-
vening in the European conflict. But
perhaps believing the U.S. would not
easily recover from the attack, Adolf
Hitler forced the issue by declaring war
on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor,
on Dec 11.
Eighty years later, the question
remains: Would the isolationist U.S. of
1941 have entered the European conflict
without Hitler’s decision for war? As
U.S. intervention proved crucial to the
defeat of Nazism, the what-ifs loom
large. The world was fortunate that
Hitler ignored history.
Provoking U.S. intervention in World
War I was fatal to Imperial Germany
in 1917-18. Awakening the sleeping
giant in 1941 would help destroy Nazi
Germany as well.
Pearl Harbor meant big trouble for
Japanese-Americans living along the
West Coast. The attack immediately
cast suspicion on that community as a
potential fifth column-spies for Japan.
Roosevelt eventually responded by issu-
ing Executive Order 9066, mandating
the “relocation” of citizens deemed a
security risk.
In part, this was born of panic and
fear, but there also emerged an element
of greed and self-interest, as some
Americans coveted the lucrative busi-
nesses and farms their Japanese-Amer-
ican neighbors had to leave behind after
being “relocated’ to internment camps.
There was racism in the mix.
The U.S warred with Nazi Germany
and Fascist Italy as well as Japan in
1942, yet very few Americans of Ital-
ian or German descent faced indefi-
nite confinement, or became targets
of appearance-based abuse. Japa-
nese-Americans endured both. In spite
of this, thousands of young Japa-
nese-Americans demonstrated loyalty
to their country by volunteering for the
armed forces from their internment
camps.
Army personnel warned they would
fight in Italy, the scene of some of the
war’s fiercest combat, but the volun-
teers were undeterred. The all Japa-
nese-American 442nd Regimental
Combat Team became the most deco-
rated unit in American history for their
size and length of service. Twenty-one
Medal of Honor winners came from
their ranks.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was
the beginning of the end of a long run
of Japanese conquest. Japan began to
modernize in the mid-19th century and
looked to Great Britain as an example
of a successful island nation. Impressed
by the British empire, Japanese lead-
ers decided the key to greatness lay in
expansion, to control raw materials and
command respect.
Japan’s rise began when it pegged
Russia as a rival for influence in the
Far East and launched what became
the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese
handily won that conflict, shocking the
world as the first nonwhite nation to
best a great power. After that victory in
1905, Japan acquired China’s Shandong
Peninsula and the Mariana, Marshall
and Carolina islands in the World War I
settlement.
In 1931, Japan colonized Manchuria,
then invaded and terrorized east-central
China in 1937. By 1941, Japan controlled
much of the Pacific, as its allies Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy dominated
Europe. When Japanese leaders decided
to try to cripple their principal Pacific
rival, the U.S., they were dizzy with
success. But the bombs dropped on
Pearl Harbor sealed Imperial Japan’s
doom. Once the U.S. joined the fight,
Japan’s bitter, brutal defense of its
Pacific conquests ultimately subjected
its civilians to the apocalyptic horror of
the atom bomb.
From his Pendleton office, East
Oregonian editor E.B. Aldrich saw a
silver lining in the storm clouds over
Oahu. Aldrich editorialized that the U.S.
should take an active role in defending
the World War I peace settlement. No
one else had the means to do so in 1919.
When the country opted for isolation
instead, Aldrich repeatedly warned of a
second world war. After Pearl Harbor,
Aldrich predicted victory for the demo-
cratic nations and expressed the hope
that this time, the U.S. would help craft
and defend a lasting peace. This it
achieved in the creation of the Marshall
Plan, NATO and the World Bank.
After the Japanese attack, Americans
would urge each other: Remember Pearl
Harbor! Even 80 years on, Pearl Harbor
is emphatically not forgotten.
———
Brigit Farley is a Washington State
University professor, student of history,
adventurer and Irish heritage girl living
in Pendleton.
series of errors by typists and translators
prevented the Japanese embassy from
giving Washington the declaration of
war in time.”
Will we, as a people continue,
to malign the very knowledgeable,
educated and experienced profession-
als in our ability to be scandalously vile
because the written word through the
internet does not expose us? Will we
miscommunicate information that could
potentially destroy someone or some-
thing?
Remembering Pearl Harbor as a
memorial to those who gave their all to
stop extreme nationalistic ideologies,
like total totalitarianism, authoritari-
anism and fascism is admirable, but to
focus on how we got there and under-
stand the price that was paid will be the
only way to save what we hold dear,
knowing that the speed of this “misin-
formation and miscommunication” is far
more potent than 1941 and will inevi-
tably catch us completely unaware and
unprepared.
Kate Dimon
Pendleton
Pioneer Chapel Funeral Home. This
wreath, gleaming with a glittery copper
bow and holiday ornaments, had been
decorated and now gifted from my PEO
Chapter members to Valori Martin, the
business owner. PEO chapters provide
woman-to-woman educational outreach
and holiday community needs gifting,
and this was an opportunity to show a
Pendleton businesswoman we appreci-
ate her.
Valori’s husband and co-business
partner had recently passed away, and
we wanted her to know how we value her
and her business. As I spoke with Valori
she expressed how touched she has been
with the outpouring of love and support
during this grieving time. She and Ron
have played such a caring role to many.
And carry on Valori is, by continuing as
the owner of her business, and assist-
ing Eastern Oregon communities with
specialized funeral planning.
Valori understands her business
and is proud to provide services with a
respectful personal touch.
yes, she feels blessed to have the
outpouring of kindness from many.
And, yes, we citizens of Pendleton and
surrounding areas are blessed to have
the services of Pioneer Chapel and its
owner, Valori Martin.
Barbara Hodgen Palmer
Pendleton
YOUR VIEWS
Remembering the
why of Pearl Harbor
We have in my mind, come to a seri-
ous crossroads. Disinformation is not
new, but as a virus spreading far faster
than it did in 1941. We remember Pearl
Harbor, those of us who were forever
affected by its introduction into a global
war, waged physically in Europe and the
islands, but waged in the hardships and
heartbreak in the U.S.
We now wage a new war of massive
disinformation on every phone, laptop,
and desktop giving voice to the most
destructive battle we have ever seen. For
those of us who remember telegrams,
or waiting for a phone line, perhaps
ringing someone continuously because
there was no “answering machine,” this
new technology will either destroy us or
make us more aware of its benefits and
its potential for abolition of the human
connection. you pick.
Pearl Harbor was a miscalculation of
communications that had life-altering
results, for my family, a grandfather I
never knew, gone in an instant. A single
paragraph only touches on the massive
calamity that led to the shock of that day:
“Japan had planned to declare war
shortly before its planes bombed the
U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on dec. 7, but a
Offering appreciation
during difficult time
I carried the wreath to the door of